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Dolly Parton, Ireland, Jeannie C. Riley, Movies, Nell McCafferty, Northern Ireland, Sexism, The Troubles
Momma Still Sockin’ It – To Ireland & to the Harper Valley PTA
Yesterday President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins signed into law the Thirty-Sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, repealing what have been some of the strictest abortion laws in the world. A historic moment for Ireland, this is also a moment to acknowledge how things have changed for women over the past 50 years – at work, at home, in the bedroom, and even in the pub. In the late 1960’s, I was a little girl concerned mostly with riding my bike and making daisy chains. I was often oblivious to The Troubles that dominated the news and even more so to the double-standards that affected the women in my life, most of…
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9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood
naming names – 9.11
Flanked by row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart, we can stretch out our arms to touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, is heartbreakingly beautiful, each one of its 2,996 flags signifying a life taken on that horrific autumn morning. We first visited the memorial in 2012. I remember watching as my daughter walked away from me, a somber and solitary figure cutting a new path deep into the Healing Field of red, white, and blue. I was undone by the sheer enormity of the memorial and her diminished stature in it. I had to force myself to look away to…
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9.11.2013, 9/11, Anything can Happen, Belfast, Billy Collins, Blogging, bombing, British Army, cancer, Diary, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Healing Field Tempe, Loss, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Peace, Poetry, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, September 11, The Peace Process, The Troubles, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Writers
The Last Name on the List on the Eleventh of September
I have yet to be disappointed by what happens when my online world collides with its ‘real’ counterpart. Landing on the virtual doorsteps of people in the middle of lives parallel to my own, I have been beautifully blindsided by unexpected coincidences and exchanges of truths that may not otherwise have seen the light of day. In my virtual home, it is easy to pull up a chair and trade ideas and opinions with people I may never meet about why Seamus Heaney still matters; about the beautiful, bruised Northern Ireland that scared me and shaped me; about breast cancer and the pain and of it, and the shiver of fear…
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American Dream, Being young, Belfast, Concerts, Eagles Tour 2018, Glenn Frey, Irish Diaspora, Take It Easy, The Eagles
The Eagles – on a Corner in Phoenix, Arizona.
When I was young, I only liked the Eagles because I knew they had been Linda Ronstadt’s backing vocalists – and I loved Linda Ronstadt. I wanted to be her and therefore learned by heart the lyrics of every song she covered. In my teenage bedroom, I spent hours singing along to her records, dreamy and delusional, telling myself that I was absolutely within her vocal range. Bored and adolescent, I longed to be far away Northern Ireland and its grey skies, from Margaret Thatcher, from politics and parades, from flags and fighting – far away from a country that has “no prairies to slice a big sun at evening.” I wanted…
